What if there was no bump?
by Jukeboxhero248
Summary: Right after the EPIC Damon and Elena Denver kiss. Probably a oneshot.


"What if I didn't? What is there was no bump?"

His words rang in her ears the entire drive home. The conversation had been so venerable but she did the one thing she hated doing. She lied to him. It was so blatantly obvious when she had answered him.

"Stefan thinks I have feelings for you".

"Do you?" His eyes bored into her soul. He was begging for the truth and she couldn't give it to him. The words "I don't know" had left her mouth before she could make sense of them, before she could realize she was lying to both of them. He knew her better than that. She wouldn't have been able to kiss him like that if she didn't care for him. Her lips still burned as she sat next to him the entire quiet drive home.

Nobody spoke. For the entire drive from Denver back to Mystic Falls, there was no conversation, no music, just empty roads and blank stares. Elena's mind couldn't stop spinning. She probably couldn't have kept up a conversation with either passenger in the car if she had tried.

When they finally arrived home, a day and a half after the incident, there had still been no words exchanged. This was painful for both Damon and Elena. They had both left so much unsaid, and now they were going back to their everyday world where they couldn't say it at all. All three passengers piled out of the black SUV and into the Boarding House. Jeremy said a brief hello to Stefan before finding a guest room and quickly falling asleep in the soft bed.

Stefan looked like hell. He hadn't slept in two days either. Once the word Motel was uttered during his phone call with his brother, he couldn't find sleep.

Damon walked in the house, briefly looked from Stefan to Elena and kept moving to the stairs.

"As much fun as this reunion looks like it's going to be, I haven't slept in three days. So good night brother, doppelganger".

Elena visibly winced at his cold demeanor.

"What the hell is his problem?" Stefan asked.

Elena refused to meet his eye, "Same as always. Me", she tried to shrug.

"Well, did you figure out what you needed to?" he asked as calmly as he could manage.

She locked eyes with him then. "Not yet" she whispered before she threw herself at him. She couldn't remember the last time that her and Stefan had really kissed. Without the impending death or heartbreak, just raw passion. She threw herself into the kiss and he met her as equally as he could manage after a second of shock. It felt forced. She could feel that the spark was gone. Or maybe, she had finally felt what a passionate kiss was supposed to feel like, and this wasn't it.

She pulled back slowly and looked into the beautiful green eyes that she had dreamed of for months and said the only thing she was thinking, "nothing".

She removed herself from his grasp and walked over to Damon's fully stocked wet bar, pouring herself a stiff drink and downing it quickly.

"Nothing?" he repeated. She nodded stiffly.

"Elena, why don't you tell me what the hell is going on?" his voice was a sad mix of pain and fury. This was not going to end the way he had predicted or hoped.

She kept her eyes focused on the amber liquid in the crystal decanter, "I kissed Damon. And I can honestly tell you, if my brother hadn't been there, it wouldn't have ended there" she explained. He made no move to speak; he only clenched his fists in response.

"I've fallen in love with him Stefan and there isn't a damn thing I can do to stop it" she whispered. He moved so fast she couldn't make sense of it until the glass she had been using shattered against the fireplace. "Then why the fuck are you coming home and kissing me?" he yelled. She winced at his words, but had expected the backlash.

"Is the emotional turmoil fun for you Elena? Are you trying to finally break me?" he continued to yell in the parlor of the house. They both knew the sound wasn't stopping there.

"That's not fair and you know it Stefan. You've pushed me away so many times in the last 8 months. You gave up on yourself, and on me, way before I fell in love with your brother so knock yourself off that pedestal" her voice gained strength as she spoke. She heard a noise on the other side of the room and her head whipped to the location, her eyes meeting soulful, venerable, crystal blue ones.

"What is going on out here?" Damon murmured from the landing of the stairs. He looked back and forth between the woman he loved and his brother a few times before Stefan decided to answer.

He sneered at her, "Congrats brother, she's in love with you. She had to rush in the door and kiss me to confirm that, but it looks like she finally picked one" he yelled before taking off out the door. She still couldn't look away from his eyes. He looked completely confused.

"Why don't you tell me what happened?" he asked once he was standing in front of her. She made no move to back away from him, which he considered a good sign.

She sighed heavily, "Just give me a minute," she whispered. Looking down at her hand, where her glass had been moments before, and realized that she was bleeding. Stefan had actually hit the glass causing it to shatter in her hand and she hadn't even registered the pain.

She turned her back to Damon before he could realize that his brother had hurt her and went back to the wet bar to find a towel.

"I gave you two days. If we wanna be technical here, I've given you two years. So I think its time to spill your guts Elena, before another Salvatore walks out on you" the defeat in his voice was very prominent. She wrapped her bloody hand in the towel on the bar and took a deep breath.

He took a deep breath with her and the conversation took a turn.

"Elena, what happened to your hand?" he growled.

She had to keep his attention. If he ran after his brother for something as insignificant as a slice to the hand then this conversation would never be finished.

"I was running to you, you know," she whispered to the dead air in front of her.

He wasn't following, "Come again?" he asked.

She turned again, her hands, one still wrapped in the towel, in the pockets of her jacket, leaning against the bar but looking at the floor.

"The night you and Stefan rescued me from Elijah, after Rose and Trevor kidnapped me. I stood at the top of the stairs and just stared at you. When I threw myself down those stairs, Stefan didn't exist to me. I think when he caught me, that was when I first realized how in trouble I was. "

She picked that moment to look up at him. His eyes were probably one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen, in that moment.

"Then you tried to compel me. When you brought my necklace back. And still I was too much of a coward to tell you the truth, to tell you that I loved you too. More than I ever thought was possible. More than I had ever loved anyone. I hid behind your compulsion, and Stefan, and Jeremy and basically anyone else who could give me a decent reason to hide."

He took her momentary silence as the break he needed. He walked towards her, standing right in front of her, and pulled her hand out of her jacket. Unwrapping the towel from the wound he saw a deep gash that would need stitches. Without looking back up at her for permission, he used a fang to cut into the tip of his own finger. He cut deep and long into the digit and his own blood seeped into her cut. They watched together as his blood stitched her hand back together, leaving nothing but a pink scar behind.

"Thank you" she whispered. His eyes rose to meet hers again.

"Your welcome" his voice was a scratchy, sinfully beautiful melody to her. But he made no move towards her. He didn't open his mouth to respond to any of her many confessions. Instead he dropped her hand and walked back to the stairs, leaving her momentarily speechless. She watched his retreating form until he disappeared and she heard the click of his bedroom door.

The click was the spark she needed to snap herself out of it. She threw the bloodstained towel onto the drink cart for Stefan to find, grabbed a crystal decanter or brown liquor and stalked up the stairs. The door wasn't locked so she let herself in. Her leather jacket hit the floor a second later, her sneakers were kicked off seconds after that and she fell into the middle of his bed, booze in hand. She heard the shower running in the attached bathroom and failed miserably to not think about him in the door less, stone walled shower.

Her mind ran in circles, why wasn't he talking. Why wasn't he happy? Had she missed her shot? He got his answers, okay some of them, but when did she get hers? Fine, if the silent treatment was how he wanted to play it then she was going to make it very difficult for him to be silent. She walked over to his closet and pulled out one of his black t-shirts. Without preamble, she stripped herself of her jeans and t-shirt, leaving herself in nothing but a black lace bra, lace boy shorts and his t-shirt.

She had just gotten herself situated on his bed with his booze, her legs on display, when he walked into the room in a towel. The entrance to the bathroom looked straight at the bed, he stopped dead in the doorway. He had heard her in his room from the shower, but he was unable to hear what she had been up to.

"Please, make yourself at home." He drawled. His eyes flicked to her clothes on his floor and his mind ran away from him for a second.

"Well, I figured we were in for a long night. So I decided to make myself comfortable. I borrowed a t-shirt. Hope you don't mind" the attitude she was exuding was rivaling Katherine's. If she smirked at him, he might actually lose it.

He however did smirk at her, "its only a hundred dollar t-shirt. Help yourself."

She smiled; she had checked the tag, John Varvatos, very expensive and very soft.

Her smile was short lived of course, "So are you gonna talk to me?" she rasped.

"Oh and which part would you like to talk about, specifically?" he sounded like he was going to continue in his rambling smart-ass tone, but she cut him off.

"How about the fact that you have spent the last two years trying to get me to be honest. And guess what, that was as honest as it gets. And you walked away."

He shrugged, "I guess I'm waiting for you to change your mind. Again." He turned to pull clothes out of him closet, a pair of flannel pajama pants and a black t-shirt. With his back to her, he dropped his towel to the ground and got dressed. He heard her quick intake of breath and couldn't help but smirk.

God he had a beautiful butt. And a strong back that flexed in all the right placed when he moved. She shook her head to break the trance his exposure had put her under.

"I love you, Damon."

He didn't turn. He shuttered, but her refused to turn.

"God damn it Damon. I love you, frustrating, stubborn, snarky ass and all and I will keep saying it until you turn and look at me." At this, he smiled, a genuine, rare Damon smile. And she would have been speechless, if he had shared it with her.

When he still didn't turn, she stood. She placed the crystal decanter on his nightstand and walked toward his closet. Her hands were resting on his broad shoulders before she could stop herself.

"Damon, why are you fighting me now? Did I miss my chance? I know I hurt you, and I'm so sorry, but did I push you too far this time?" he could hear her tears. He was terrified of letting her see his.

She slipped her hands from his shoulder, laid a kiss on his right shoulder blade and walked away. "Fine, I'll leave you alone."

And with that she resigned herself to his unknown.

She grabbed her clothes from his floor and took off down the stairs. Her tears were completely uncontrollable now. She didn't care that she had forgotten her shoes. She knew her keys were in her jacket pocket; so grabbing that and her jeans was her only priority before running from the room. She slipped her jeans back on in the parlor and made it to the front door. Her hand touched the knob when she heard him.

"Why did you kiss him tonight?"

Her forehead rested against the solid wood of the front door.

"Closure. I had finally learned what a real passionate kiss should have felt like. I had to know that it couldn't be recreated. I had to know how I really felt about him without the life and death doom and gloom."

"And what did you feel?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" That caught him off guard. He hadn't expected that at all.

She turned slowly and pushed her back up against the door. "It took that moment to realize that I really haven't experienced much when it comes to love. While I may love Stefan and I feel very grateful for his presence in my life, I don't think I was ever really in love with him. It took really falling in love to prove that".

He took another step forward, his forehead pressed to her, his eyes closed. Soaking in the moment.

"If we do this, you can't change your mind on me tomorrow. I won't survive it this time. You have to really choose me. No turning back", he whispered. His eyes still weren't open; he still couldn't look at her.

"I'm so sorry I've hurt you so many times. I will never forgive myself for putting you through all of this" she whispered. The tears slowly trailed down her cheeks.

He sighed, his eyes still closed tightly, "Don't apologize. Make it up to me".

She nodded against him, "Forever".


End file.
